Conversion reformists garner praise from press

A group of Israeli rabbis has formed an alternative Jewish conversion court, in defiance of the Chief Rabbinate, making front page news, with the press calling the move a “rebellion” and lauding it in glowing terms.

Haaretz calls the move, by Orthodox rabbis belonging to the Zionist movement, a “blow to the Chief Rabbinate,” in what marks the first time that Orthodox rabbis have acted in an organized fashion to offer an alternative to the governmental authority to provide conversion to Judaism in Israel. The paper reports that six minors were converted by the independent conversion court on Monday in a private ceremony in the settlement of Alon, with the consent of their parents.

The network of conversion courts, named “Conversion by Halacha (Jewish law),” adheres to Jewish tradition but bypasses governmental bureaucracy. Yedioth Ahronoth calls it a “dramatic development,” as the liberal rabbis are of national prominence but made an independent move, flying in the face of the rabbinate.

The decision was taken as the ultra-Orthodox-dominated Chief Rabbinate’s parameters for conversion were deemed increasingly stringent and alienating to nonreligious Israeli Jews, and after a bill proposing reformation of the legal process of conversion under Israeli law was torpedoed as part of the post-election coalition agreement struck between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the ultra-Orthodox parties.

The “revolutionary step,” led by rabbis Nahum Rabinovitch and David Stav, wasn’t met with a reaction from the Chief Rabbinate when the announcement was made Monday, but the rabbis are nevertheless preparing for a legal battle, Israel Hayom reports. It notes that one of the problems will be government recognition of the conversions performed by the alternative rabbinical courts, to which there is no immediate solution.

The Israeli media report that somewhere between 300,000 and 350,000 Israeli citizens are not legally considered Jewish, which doesn’t prevent them and/or their parents receiving citizenship under the Law of Return.

Yedioth Ahronoth features an op-ed by former MK Eliezer Stern, who spearheaded a now-defunct proposal to reform Jewish conversion, in which he rails against the Chief Rabbinate for “using Judaism to advance narrow sectarian aims and turning it from a welcoming Judaism into a factional and alienating Judaism.”

He says he sat in on the conversion proceedings on Monday, “and I was excited.”

“Great [thinkers] of Israel — who weren’t chosen in a stinking political deal, but from their great strength in the Torah — brought a cure to minors who converted, to parents, and perhaps above all, to all those who are determined to see Israel as a Jewish state and not a religious state,” Stern says.

The paper does quote a former IDF chief rabbi who is an acting judge on a Rabbinate conversion court. Yisrael Weiss calls the move “scandalous” and notes that “the military and civilian conversion is the best conversion there can be. The most friendly, the most engaging, and everything within the framework of halacha. I hope the Rabbinate and High Court of Justice won’t lend their support to this.”

Meanwhile, charges filed against a mother of four and a young man, both Syrian Druze of the Golan Heights, for an attack on an IDF ambulance and the murder of an injured Syrian man, also takes top billing in the Hebrew press Tuesday. The June lynching of two Syrians — the second man was gravely injured — who were en route to Israeli hospitals, by a mob in the Golan Heights was recorded by one of the participants, Yedioth Ahronoth reports. Bashira Mahmoud, 48, and Amal Abu Salah, 21, of Majdal Shams stand accused of murdering one of the Syrians by repeatedly beating him, as well as the second man.

“The raging mob charged the ambulance while armed with sticks, iron chains and rocks,” the charges brought against the man said, according to Yedioth Ahronoth. “While the deceased lay on the ground unconscious, the accused armed himself with a beam and repeatedly beat with great force the upper torso of the deceased with intent to kill him.”

Israel Hayom reports on a more recent attack, on an Israeli man at a gas station on Route 443 earlier this week. Ben Moyal, 26, recounts to the paper from his hotel bed that he was stabbed in the shoulder while filling his tire with air at a gas station.

“I shouted, ‘Save me, they’re stabbing me,’ and understood that it’s a terror attack,” he tells the paper. “All of the workers in the gas station just looked and even snickered [at me]. Nobody did anything. The workers were Arabs.”